


Flames

by SpellCleaver



Series: Love Is Not Enough [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Fire, Flashbacks, Gen, Introspection, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Leia needs a hug, Luke is kinda OOC, Luke needs a hug, Memories, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Sad, bad memories, but he's not in the best place so cut me some slack, flames, he's allowed to be pessimistic sometimes, pessimism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 05:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13024623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpellCleaver/pseuds/SpellCleaver
Summary: Fire can do nothing but destroy.Luke is a Skywalker. He knows this. He knows it all too well.





	Flames

Luke grips the controls to his X-wing tightly, and doesn't let go. He reaches to key in the hyperspace coordinates before he freezes.

Where can he go? Where can he go where Leia can't find him, where Han can't find him, where Ben (Kylo. . .) and his Knights can't find him?

Because he needs to get away. He knows it. He can't-

He can't-

He can't stay.

He lets out a groan and releases the X-wing's controls. Artoo beeps a question at him, but he ignores him for a moment as he runs a hand through his hair, lets a breath hiss out between his teeth, _thinks_.

Leia would be proud, he contemplates with a wry twist to his mouth. He's actually bothering to think through something for once.

_Leia. . ._

He can't stay and face Leia and Han, tell them what has happened to their son. What _he failed to prevent_ happening to their son. He just _can't_. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

No, he scolds himself. He'll have to work through it at one point - this _can't_ be the end - he _won't allow it to be_. Not after what they've gone through, not after Yavin and Bespin and Endor, not after the Death Star and Cloud City and the second Death Star, not after Alderaan and carbonite and familial revelations. He can't let their friendship die - he won't, unless they want nothing to do with him after this themselves, in which case. . . he'll comply.

And he can't give up on the Force either, can he? Not after everything Ben and Yoda and his father sacrificed to let him carry that legacy forward.

_A fine job you did of that_ , he scoffs. _Look at it all now - back to ashes and dust and whispers on a rumour mill no one dares speak of. What have the Jedi accomplished, really, since the rise of the Empire?_ Nothing.

_Nothing._

Absolutely _nothing-_

He smacks his palm against his knee, because he needs to hit _something_ , and if he hits the controls then he might accidentally hit eject or something and then where would he be, trapped as he was in orbit above a destroyed Jedi Academy hidden from the rest of the galaxy? He would die if he did.

And despite it all, he doesn't want to die.

He _doesn't want to die_.

But it doesn't matter whether or not he dies, in the long run, because in the end all he ever did for the galaxy was restart the Jedi, and he doesn't need to think anymore on how successful _that_ was. It was Leia and Han who got the shield down, Lando who blew up the second Death Star, and his father who killed the Emperor. What had he ever done except point and shoot?

And now, the only legacy he'd been truly proud of had just gone up in flames.

Up in flames. . .

_Up in flames. . ._

He doesn't remember drifting off, but he knows he must have, because he's not in his X-wing anymore. He's standing in a dark room surrounded by people, none of whom seem to have noticed his presence.

There's a pyre at the centre of it all, for a tall man wearing Jedi robes. Luke recognises a young Obi-Wan (because he's Obi-Wan here, not Ben, as he usually is in Luke's mind) standing beside a little boy, and a teenage woman he knows to have been his mother: Padmé Amidala. Next to her is the then Chancellor Palpatine, wearing a convincing façade of grief. Luke peers at them all curiously. Why is he here?

"Always two, there are," says a familiar voice. Luke whirls round to see Yoda standing, gazing at the body of the fallen Jedi which what might have been categorised as grief in anyone else. Luke blinks once, then twice, as he finishes his sentence: "A master, and an apprentice."

A Sith, Luke realises. They've just killed a Sith, or maybe another Dark Side user. _Always two_. . .

The dark-skinned Jedi beside him - Mace Windu, Luke recognises from old, censored holos - purses his lips and picks up the line of inquiry. "But which was destroyed? The master, or the apprentice?"

_How many were with Ben?_ he thinks. _How many did the malevolent force that Turned him poison, ruin, twist beyond recognition? We're clearly not dealing with the Sith anymore._

Before Luke can truly attempt to comprehend what it all means, he blinks and the scene dissolves into darkness and light.

The brightness hurts his eyes after being in the dark room, so he takes a moment to realise where he is - _when_ he is. He stands on a clifftop on a volcanic planet, watching a river of magma surge past him - more specifically, watching the two lightsaber-wielders duelling atop it.

His heart leaps into his throat. He knows this scene - has spoken all-too frequently with his father's ghost about it, seen the glint of regret and grief in Anakin's eye, heard the way his voice cracked and broke. He is on Mustafar.

"It's over, Anakin!" Ben - no, _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ \- shouts. "I have the high ground!"

" _You underestimate my power_." It's less a fact than a roared challenge; even from here Luke can see the burning amber of his father's eyes, the colour of the lava below his feet and the flames that had consumed his Jedi Academy, the flames that he'd burned his father's cybernetic body in on Endor-

"Don't try it." There's something begging, pleading about Obi-Wan's voice as he says it - _please don't make me kill you I don't want to kill you my brother I love you oh ANAKIN COME BACK TO ME WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS COME BACK-_

Luke's father jumps - no, _leaps_. There is a blue arc, and Luke looks away. He can still hear the screams, though, of agony and grief and heartbreak and _"I loved you!"_ and _"I hate you!"_ and then it's too much and he squeezes his eyes shut-

Only to feel the world dissolve around him again.

He sucks in a startled breath, then releases it through his nose as his eyes fly open again. And then he wishes he could close them, because not this, anything but this, Mustafar he'd imagined enough as it was but this was the root of all his nightmares and not this anything but this-

But he can't look away.

He stares, transfixed, at the smoking corpses of his aunt and uncle.

_Fire_ , he thinks dully, _can do nothing but destroy_.

It hadn't really resonated with him until later, their deaths. Oh, it had certainly resonated on that day, yes; he'd seen his illusions and daydreams of his father dissolve before his eyes, he'd been given a promise of glory and adventure if he went traipsing after a captured princess with Ben, and then here he was, watching his dull, everyday life get blown to smithereens and drift away on the morning wind.

But it hadn't really settled in yet: Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were gone.

He'd never again wake to Uncle Owen's stern voice telling him that he'd done a shoddy job fixing the vaporators and needed to redo it.

He'd never again sit up at night listening to his aunt's stories about the Whitesun dynasty, about the Lars dynasty, and - most importantly to him - about the Skywalker dynasty, the one's she'd heard from his grandmother years and years ago.

He'd never again hear his uncle's _you can waste time with your friends once your chores are done_.

He'd never again hear his aunt's _you need to be more careful with your Skyhopper Luke you could get badly hurt one day._

It hit him in the worst times, that knowledge - he'd be tinkering with his X-wing and find a different way to arrange this and therefore it reduced the strain on that and he would want to show his uncle how he'd fixed it, how _I can be a mechanic too!_ like he'd wanted as a child, but then he'd remember. He'd be munching on some obscure food dug up from the other side of the galaxy and he'd think about how it the perfect combination of his aunt's favourite flavours, and how she should try it. . .

It never really stopped hurting, their loss.

Luke clenches his fists at the sight of the homestead burning anew; he has to look away. The wind blows his hair across his face, but it can't block the scene that's been burned into his retina for thirty years: two skeletons reaching desperately for salvation.

He feels the scene change around him but he takes comfort in the warm darkness of his shut eyes, the sharp pricks of pain in his palms where the nails dig in, the steady thump of his heart in his throat. He doesn't want to open his eyes on another scene of torment. He _doesn't_.

And so he does not. But he can still _hear_ perfectly fine, so Leia's scream of anguish penetrates every part of him. It forces his eyes to flutter open, moments before the harsh green beam fires on the unsuspecting planet, _peaceful_ planet, below.

Luke has seen an inkling of what a Death Star could do - that time at the viewport, the Emperor gloating behind him, his lightsaber right there and waiting for him to strike down this _monster_ who dared threaten his friends. But it only destroyed ships then, not entire planets.

He's never seen _that_ horror, except perhaps in his nightmares.

He sees it now.

Alderaan blows like a firework, a powder keg. Luke knows logically that there's no sound in space, but over the noise of Leia's quiet sobbing and Darth Vader's respirator he imagines he hears it, a great roaring rush followed by a silence so heavy it seems to crush all life out of the survivors.

_What survivors?_ No one could ever survive that.

Alderaan is gone, in an explosion of fire and brimstone-

_Fire can do nothing but destroy._

Leia is screaming, and Luke finds that he hates the Imperials around them both, hates the Grand Moff standing smirking at her pain, hates his father as he stands there doing _nothing_ -

He blinks again. He's standing among the woods of the forest moon of Endor, his father's pyre burning merrily while the debris of the Death Star is seen above, still orbiting the planet. At the time, he thought that the fire was cleansing his father, burning away his time as Vader, scourging the darkness _out_ _out out_ until his spirit could emerge light and free.

He knows now that wasn't true.

He was destroying a symbol. A monolith. The face of an Empire. He hadn't wanted his father to be associated with them any longer.

He'd wanted that threat - to Leia, to his friends, to him - _gone_. He'd wanted to protect them all from the wrath of a regime when they discovered certain bloodlines and family ties existed. Much like on the second Death Star itself, when Vader threatened Leia, and he wanted him _gone gone gone_ and his friends _safe safe safe_ and he _hacked_ and _slashed_ and _fought_ until his father lay defenceless before him, lacking a right hand.

It wasn't cleansing, that pyre. It was destroying.

As destroying as the flames that consumed his Academy, that smothered his students in their burning embrace, that scorched the synth-skin off his right hand-

Luke opens his eyes, heart hammering, to find himself still in his X-wing above the planet, Artoo beeping frantically from his position in the astromech socket. He kneads his forehead with his metal hand - it's cold against his skin, and drags him out of his stupor. He needs to-

He needs to get-

He needs to get away.

His Jedi Academy is gone and he's _failed_ , and- and he needs to get away. Because, the Jedi of old lasted for what, ten thousand years? And his lasted for less than thirty. He needs to find how they did it, how they kept going despite the galaxy's indifference to them, how they stayed alive and thriving for millennia, until the faults and flaws described to him by Yoda and Ben and his father led to their downfall - and the downfall of democracy.

He needs to find the first Jedi temple.

He knows where it is, vaguely - he found references to it some years back, some mention in a scroll or document that he'd filed away to be thought about later before finding himself too occupied with teaching to do so.

A planet covered in water, save for a few rocky archipelagos here and there.

_Water_.

Luke makes his decision - he reaches to plug in the hyperspace coordinates. Then he hesitates.

Artoo beeps a question.

"No, it's fine, buddy," he mutters, more to himself than to the astromech. "I just-" He doesn't finish the thought.

Because he can't bring Artoo with him, can he? He needs to leave someone behind to tell the others where he is in case of ( _severe_ ) emergencies. He's not planning on disappearing forever, but if he does, then. . . Leia will need to know where to find him, if a situation becomes too dire. _Only_ if a situation becomes dire.

He thinks about that map he'd found, that he'd left in the care of the Church of the Force, on Jakku. Of Lor San Tekka.

Luke nods to himself. He'll get the map, give it to Artoo, letting Tekka keep a piece, so Leia and Han will be able to track him down if they really need to - but only if they _really need to_. And then he'll drop Artoo off on the planet of the Jedi Academy - where Leia will go first, to look for him, to see the destruction for herself - and fly away to Ahch-To. On his own.

A planet covered in water. Not fire. _Water_.

Fire can do nothing but destroy, but water. . . Luke thought it was a miracle when he lived on Tatooine, and he still does.

He keys in the coordinates.


End file.
